Friday Reprise: Koquethagechton/White Eyes of the Lenape/Delaware

Native American leaders tried a variety of strategies to cope with the influx of White Settlers onto their hunting ranges.  While some preferred all-out resistance, others tried to negotiate and work with the inevitable as best the could.  Even then, the results were almost always tragic.  White Eyes' story is a case in point. 

Koquethagechton was born somewhere in Pennsylvania (c 1730-1778), and his clan heritage marked him out as a man in a position for leadership.  He received his warrior's training and later married a young woman, Rachel Doddridge, who'd been captured from her Settler family as a little girl and assimilated into the tribe.  They had one son, whom they named after a personal friend of the family.   White Eyes first came to the attention of British authorities as a messenger during the French and Indian War.  Settlers and Colonial authorities referred to him by a variety of names, including William or Captain Grey Eyes.  Most likely, the names referred to some feature of his eyes that stood out as different from other Natives, but is not recorded now.  Despite the fact that he did not speak English well, he was singled out by Colonial authorities as being useful for facilitating interaction between Whites and Natives, a role he seemed willing to play. 

By 1773, he had risen to prominence among his people as speaker of the Delaware Head Council.  By that time, he had migrated from his birthplace in Pennsylvania to the Muskingum River Valley in Ohio.  There, many Delaware came under the influence of the Moravian missionaries and turned to Christianity.  White Eyes chose to retain his traditional beliefs, but tried to make sure that Christian Delaware remained part of the larger Lenape community.  He established his own town, called White Eyes' Town, near where Coshocton, Ohio is today.  In 1774, the Lenape Grand Council named him Principal Chief of their Nation.  White Eyes' first attempts at negotiations failed, as he was unable to persuade the Shawnee not to escalate the conflict that became Lord Dunmore's War.  However, he served as an intermediary between the Virginians and the warring tribes and helped negotiate the Treaty of Camp Charlotte, October, 1774, which ended that War. 

White Eyes' ultimate aim was a separate Lenape state in the Ohio Valley where his people could live without fear of encroachment on their lands.  He was willing to talk to British colonial officials in hopes of making that a reality, but the Revolution intervened.  He opened negotiations with the Americans and, in 1776, personally visited and spoke to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, requesting a separate homeland for his people.  In 1778, representatives of the United States and the Lenape signed the Treaty of Fort Pitt, which promised, among other things, a separate Lenape State.  American negotiators took the treaty back to Philadelphia, where it was never presented to Congress for action.  The treaty also provided that the Lenape would act as guides to American forces trying to dislodge the British from the Ohio Valley.

In early November, 1778, White Eyes joined an expedition led by American General Lachlan McIntosh as a guide and negotiator.  He died soon after and the Americans reported his death to his people as smallpox.  Only years later did White Eyes' friend, United States Indian Agent George Morgan, write a letter to Congress requesting a pension for White Eyes' widow and child.  In that letter, he claimed that White Eyes had been killed by an American militiaman.  The assassination was covered up at the time to avoid alienating the Lenape and inflaming other tribes in the frontier.   White Eyes' widow, Rachel, who had assimilated to her husband's people, was also murdered by White Militia in 1788.  George Morgan took their son in and raised him as his own child.  He was successful in securing for White Eyes' son a scholarship to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), all expenses paid by the Continental Congress.  Unfortunately, the young man died in 1798. 

Friday Reprise: Buckongahelas of the Delaware, 1720-1805

Buckongahelas (c 1720-1805) was a war leader of the Delaware/Lenape people.  The Lenni Lenape are an Algonquian-speaking people whose name for themselves translates as 'pure man'.  Settlers called them Delaware, because their original home range was along the Delaware River, including parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.  Buckongehalas was born somewhere in present-day Delaware, but would live to see his people pushed into the Ohio River Valley by advancing settlement.  His known family included a son, Mahonegon, who was killed by a settler in 1773. 

Buckongahelas was already a noted warrior by the time of the French and Indian War (1755-1763), where he took the side of the Settlers against the French.  Sources conflict as to whether he was a titled chief, or a war leader.   Either way, he was a fierce opponent in battle and his enemies, Native or European, did not take him lightly.  During the Revolutionary War, he sided with the British against the Americans.  He broke away from a larger band led by White Eyes, and moved his followers closer to the village of Blue Jacket, a Shawnee leader.  The two men became close friends and allies in war.  A number of Lenape had converted to Christianity and lived at the Moravian mission village at Gnadenhutten in Ohio.  Buckonghelas told them that the Settlers would have no regard for the fact that they were Christians and would kill them anyway.  He urged these vulnerable Delaware to leave with his band.  They refused and in March, 1782, most of these Natives were killed in the Gnadenhutten Massacre.

After the Revolution, Buckongahelas joined his Shawnee allies in several skirmishes aimed at repelling American settlement into the Ohio Valley.  These clashes led to the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795).  Eventually, the Americans prevailed, forcing the British to leave the Ohio Valley.  American forces now occupied the home territory of the Shawnee, the Lenape and their allies, and the conflict continued.  His warriors, along with Blue Jacket's Shawnee and Little Turtle's Miami, were present at the Battle of the Wabash, on November 4, 1791, where they inflicted a decisive defeat on American General Arthur St. Clair, who lost 600 men.  This battle was the most devastating military defeat suffered by American forces at the hands of Native Americans up to that time.  Nevertheless, the Americans rallied and defeated the Native alliance at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1794.  Buckonghelas was among those leaders who signed the Treaty of Greenville I 1795, and the Treaty of Vincennes in 1804, seeking to preserve his people's Ohio Valley homeland against further White encroachment. 

Buckonghelas lived out his final years near what is now Muncie, Indiana.  He died in 1805 from either smallpox or influenza.  Some of the Delaware believed that the illnesses, whatever they were, were brought on by witchcraft and executed a few of their own.  The despair and sense of defeat of the Delaware and the other peoples in the Ohio Valley led to the rise of the Shawnee Prophet and Tecumseh, who would try again where Buckongahelas and White Jacket had left off.  Although there are no likenesses of Buckongahelas, he was described as being 5' 10" and a strong, powerfully-built man.  A statue of him cradling the body of his dying son was erected in a park in Buckhannon, West Virginia, commemorating his assistance to the settlers during the French and Indian War.

(This entry first appeared in May, 2016).